In these times of fake news ruling the roost, 87-year-old “Magistrate” Mariyakutty is the toast of Kerala. She has single-handedly taken on the ruling CPM and its government, forcing party mouthpiece Deshabhimani to come out with an apology for spreading false information against her.

Not satisfied with the apology, Mariyakutty has approached the high court for justice, putting the CPM leadership and the party newspaper in a political soup.

Mariyakutty’s crime: she had dared to walk on the streets of her hometown Adimali in Idukki district with a begging bowl protesting against the denial of old-age pension for five months.

Kerala, which is passing through a financial crisis, has been defaulting on many of its welfare scheme promises. While the state government puts the entire blame for the financial crisis on the Centre, the Opposition Congress claims the government’s priorities are lopsided.

Mariyakutty, a resident of Irunoorekkar in Adimali, chose November 7 for her protest. The date coincided with the concluding day of Keraleeyam, a Rs 27-crore extravaganza organised by the Left government to highlight Kerala’s progress under Marxist strongman and chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan.

As Mariyakutty’s unusual protest hit the headlines, Deshabhimani came out with a “fact-finding” report. It claimed that Mariyakutty was a pawn in the hands of Idukki Congress MP Dean Kuriakose, and that her protest had been “stage-managed” to denigrate the Left government.

The newspaper further claimed that Mariyakutty owned 1.5 acres of land at Mannamkandam village in Adimali and two houses nearby, one of which fetched a monthly rent of Rs 5,000.

Deshabhimani also claimed that a daughter of Mariyakutty was in Switzerland. So, where was the need for Mariyakutty to beg on the streets, the newspaper asked.

The CPM’s formidable “cyber warriors” flooded social media with posts “exposing the truth” behind Mariyaktty’s protest. Party WhatsApp groups let loose a barrage of propaganda against the elderly woman and, of course, the Congress and Dean Kuriakose.

Undaunted, Mariyakutty approached the Mannamkandam village officer and demanded a certificate from him acknowledging that she was the owner of 1.5 acres of land in his jurisdiction. The officer certified that no such land existed in her name.

The claim about her house also proved fake. Mariyakutty lives in a tin-covered shed owned by her youngest daughter who — regardless of Deshabhimani’s claims about Switzerland — sells lottery tickets in Adimali town for a living.

Of her three other children, two live nearby and the other, a preacher with the Pentecost, is in Delhi.

Mariyakutty, a day labourer, is half-blind. She had come to Adimali with her parents when she was barely 12 and has lived there ever since. She studied up to Class IV. Mariyakutty’s husband walked out on her 36 years ago when she was 51.

When these facts about Mariyakutty came to light, Deshabhimani came out with a single-column report saying she indeed lived with her youngest daughter and expressing an apology for the earlier reports.

Mariyakutty has earned the sobriquet “Magistrate” thanks to her fearlessness and her courage in protesting any injustice. She has no hesitation about going to the police station or to the court.

“I protest against injustice wherever I see it. I have gone to court many times. That is why people call me ‘Magistrate’,” Mariyakutty has told reporters.

Mariyakutty has approached the court because she wants an outright apology from the party, not from just the “Mapra”, a slang coined by the CPM cadre to describe “bourgeois” journalists.

She wants the CPM to prove the whereabouts of her daughter, who is supposedly working abroad.

CPM state secretary M.V. Govindan has tried to brush the subject aside by underlining that the newspaper has already expressed regret over the mistake. But he has been silent on how a party that claims to represent the working class could launch a smear campaign against an impoverished woman.

“Deshabhimani is owned by the CPM. Hence the party secretary is responsible for its misdeeds. It is the state CPM secretary, M.V. Govindan, who should apologise to Mariyakutty,” said A. Jayashankar, political analyst and social critic.

This is not the first time that Deshabhimani or the party TV channel Kairali has been accused of spreading false and malicious propaganda against opponents.